I’m off to Tanzania in couple of weeks, but I didn’t get to buy the flights myself, so it turned out that tking board there and back will cost 300€.
I was thinnking of sawing some of my older boards in half and putting them together when I get there. I also though of taking a planer and some epoxy with me, since I’m teaching carpentry and have a workshop there. I don’t know about the local woods though. Then I was thinking of buying a bodyboard.
swim fins and a hand plane. no, not the kind for woodworking. Honestly, you are facing a huge swell shadow from madagascar, and while the country would have some awesome setups the swell blocking is going to kill a lot of what there would be. combine that with the fact that a lot of the waves are kinda far from shore(reefs) I wouldn’t think of it as a first rate destination. Make a longboard while you are there.
Either by sawing, or coughing up the cash to get a board there, I would still bring one. While it’s possible that you’ll find wood appropriate to build a hollow or a chambered board, or enough insulation EPS to shape something, you want to have a board if you’ll be there for any length of time.
I lived in West Africa for a year. Had a board made to take with me that I ended up leaving in France due to travel complications (a lot of my time was in villages in the bush) and cost. In the end, I lived in a beach town in Ivory Coast called Grand Bassam for nine months. Nine months of relatively nice beach break, sometimes excellent, and in that time I couldn’t find a way to get a board… EPS but no epoxy. No PU anywhere. I did find a beat to death Peter Benjamin circa '82 in a clothes shop in the capital for only 600usd…and seriously considered it at one point! Wood was hard to find in appropriate densities and sizes… this was long before Mr. Jensen and the Hollow Revival.
While I’m happy to have improved my bodysurfing skills, it would have been an different experience. Working my way back up the coast towards Senegal and a flight home, I stayed at some villages with simply great waves and the closest thing I came to board surfing was on a borrowed budget boogie board at a spot that would have been stellar on almost anything.
You’ll have a great experience no matter what, don’t get me wrong. The purpose of my trip was humanitarian work and to gather informaiton for a Masters centered on African cinema. However, a little surfing wouldn’t have hurt.